People live with the illusion that we have a democratic system, but it's only the outward form of one. In reality we live in a plutocracy, a government of the rich. Jose Saramago Portuguese Writer More Jose Saramago Quotes 1
I never appreciated 'positive heroes' in literature. They are almost always cliches, copies of copies, until the model is exhausted. I prefer perplexity, doubt, uncertainty, not just because it provides a more 'productive' literary raw material, but because that is the way we humans really are. Jose Saramago Portuguese Writer More Jose Saramago Quotes 1
I presume that nobody will deny the positive aspects of the North American cultural world. These are well known to all. But these aspects do not make one forget the disastrous effects of the industrial and commercial process of 'cultural lamination' that the USA is perpetrating on the planet. Jose Saramago Portuguese Writer More Jose Saramago Quotes 0
I think we are blind. Blind people who can see, but do not see. Jose Saramago Portuguese Writer More Jose Saramago Quotes 0
In effect I am not a novelist, but rather a failed essayist who started to write novels because he didn't know how to write essays. Jose Saramago Portuguese Writer More Jose Saramago Quotes 0
In the end we discover the only condition for living is to die. Jose Saramago Portuguese Writer More Jose Saramago Quotes 0
Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are. Jose Saramago Portuguese Writer More Jose Saramago Quotes 0
It is difficult to understand these people who democratically take part in elections and a referendum, but are then incapable of democratically accepting the will of the people. Jose Saramago Portuguese Writer More Jose Saramago Quotes 0
It is economic power that determines political power, and governments become the political functionaries of economic power. Jose Saramago Portuguese Writer More Jose Saramago Quotes 0
Look what happened with the employment law in France-the law was withdrawn because the people marched in the streets. I think what we need is a global protest movement of people who won't give up. Jose Saramago Portuguese Writer More Jose Saramago Quotes 0
Perhaps it is the language that chooses the writers it needs, making use of them so that each might express a tiny part of what it is. Jose Saramago Portuguese Writer More Jose Saramago Quotes 0
Society has to change, but the political powers we have at the moment are not enough to effect this change. The whole democratic system would have to be rethought. Jose Saramago Portuguese Writer More Jose Saramago Quotes 0
The attitude of insolent haughtiness is characteristic of the relationships Americans form with what is alien to them, with others. Jose Saramago Portuguese Writer More Jose Saramago Quotes 0
The novel is not so much a literary genre, but a literary space, like a sea that is filled by many rivers. Jose Saramago Portuguese Writer More Jose Saramago Quotes 0
The period that I could consider the most important in my literary work came about beginning with the Revolution, and in a certain way, developed as a consequence of the Revolution. But it was also a result of the counterrevolutionary coup of November 1975. Jose Saramago Portuguese Writer More Jose Saramago Quotes 0
The problem is that the right doesn't need any ideas to govern, but the left can't govern without ideas. Jose Saramago Portuguese Writer More Jose Saramago Quotes 0
The world had already changed before September 11. The world has been going through a process of change over the last 20 or 30 years. A civilization ends, another one begins. Jose Saramago Portuguese Writer More Jose Saramago Quotes 0
The world is governed by institutions that are not democratic - the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO. Jose Saramago Portuguese Writer More Jose Saramago Quotes 0
There are times when it is best to be content with what one has, so as not to lose everything. Jose Saramago Portuguese Writer More Jose Saramago Quotes 0
Things will be very bad for Latin America. You only have to consider the ambitions and the doctrines of the empire, which regards this region as its backyard. Jose Saramago Portuguese Writer More Jose Saramago Quotes 0
We're not short of movements proclaiming that a different world is possible, but unless we can coordinate them into an international movement, capitalism just laughs at all these little organisations. Jose Saramago Portuguese Writer More Jose Saramago Quotes 0
What kind of world is this that can send machines to Mars and does nothing to stop the killing of a human being? Jose Saramago Portuguese Writer More Jose Saramago Quotes 0
Without the faintest possibility of finding a job, I decided to devote myself to literature: it was about time to find out what I was worth as a writer. Jose Saramago Portuguese Writer More Jose Saramago Quotes 0
Words were not given to man in order to conceal his thoughts. Jose Saramago Portuguese Writer More Jose Saramago Quotes 0
Some people spend their entire lives reading but never get beyond reading the words on the page, they don't understand that the words are merely stepping stones placed across a fast-flowing river, and the reason they're there is so that we can reach the farther shore, it's the other side that matters. Jose Saramago Portuguese More Jose Saramago Quotes 0